


Empty Mansions

by inkandpaperhowl



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:44:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4998247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandpaperhowl/pseuds/inkandpaperhowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know you don’t do feelings, dearest,” she murmurs, fingers tangling in Isabela’s hair, “but you’re my home now."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Mansions

“Funny, isn’t it, how messages always seem to come when you’re not home?”  
      
Bodhan’s offhand comment stops Aliena in her tracks, one hand on the door handle. She pauses, shrugging her quiver into a more comfortable angle and turns back into the house. There’s a warm glow coming from the hearth in the main room, and she can hear Sandal tinkering away at something--maybe Varric’s request for a fire rune for Bianca. She closes her eyes, but there are no other sounds, no other scents, nothing else to glimpse from the corner of her eye.  
      
The house is so empty.  
      
“I was just heading out again,” she calls back to her self-appointed manservant. “Don’t wait up,” she finishes brightly. She’s out the door before she can hear whatever reply he might have given.  
      
She lets her feet carry her through Hightown--they know their own way by now. She keeps an ear open, eavesdropping on conversations as she passes. Varric likes to say she’s listening for moneymaking opportunities. She laughs and agrees with him. Merrill once said she was looking for quests and adventures, and she couldn’t really argue with that one, either. Aveline and Isabela know better, though neither of them will ever say it, for two different reasons: they know she’s just looking for people who need her help. Aveline knows she won’t appreciate the dent in her hard-won, hard-case reputation. Isabela...well, Isabela professes to disapprove.  
      
Of course, Aliena knows her better than that, too, but she won’t say anything either.  
      
There’s nothing out of the ordinary, and she’s over the bridge into Lowtown almost before she realizes it. The door to the Hanged Man pulls at her like a compulsion, and she’s ducking into the dirty, dim tavern, breathing in the fetid scent of spilled ale, stale body odor, and the faint, underlying hint of blood. Noise assaults her ears, loud voices all screaming to be heard over one another and the crackle of the fire and the unending swells of raucous laughter. It’s like being battered by an ocean of sound, waves breaking across her as if she were shore. She smiles, tension running out of her shoulders like water rolls off a rock.  
      
She doesn’t know when the Hanged Man became home, and she knows she’ll never admit it, but she’s become more comfortable here than in the empty house on the hill. She pushes her way through the press of bodies, regulars shouting greetings she just smiles in response to, and squeezes her way up to Isabela’s usual place at the bar.  
      
The pirate captain maintains a pocket of space around her, enforced by death glares and the sharpness of her dagger, if not her tongue, and Aliena escapes the crowd, stepping into that tiny island of space as if coming up for air. Isabela raises an eyebrow and smiles to see her, and whatever small tension that remained finishes draining from Aliena’s body. She collapses against the bar in relief, catching Courff’s eye and shouting for her usual, which he produces almost before she’s finished talking.  
      
“Fancy seeing you here,” Isabela says, her eyes glittering.  
      
“I missed the rat-flavored whiskey,” she responds, downing her shot with an appreciative shudder. “Just can’t get that in Hightown.”  
      
“So send Bodhan here for it.”  
      
“Are you kidding? With his fancy getup, I think he’d get mugged before he crossed the bridge!”  
      
“You just need an excuse to come see me,” Isabela says slyly.  
      
“I need an _excuse_ to come see you?” Aliena asks, cocking her head to the side suggestively. Isabela laughs.  
      
There’s a cheer from the back, loud enough to dim the noise in the main room for a second as people turn toward the stairs, curious, before going back to their own conversations. Aliena rolls her eyes. “Varric telling stories again? I wish he wouldn’t.”  
      
Isabela laughs again. “Oh, come on. Isn’t it kind of nice being a hero?”  
      
Aliena shrugs. She doesn’t do what she does for recognition. She doesn’t do it for the money, either. Not anymore. She does it because it needs doing and no one else will.  
      
“Want to come out?” she asks.  
      
“On one of your nighttime patrols that the guards should be able to handle?” Isabela replies, but there’s a smile playing about her mouth. “Oh, why not. There’s nothing fun happening here. Who else is coming?”  
      
“I can grab Varric before he spreads more lies about our exploits.”  
      
Isabela sighs. “Bring cat boy, too, then. He’s up there listening to the wild tales.”  
      
“Or...it could just be you and me,” Aliena says quieter than she means to. Isabela raises an eyebrow.  
      
“This is a not-so-clever attempt to lure me away privately?”  
      
“Maybe,” Aliena grins. They’re beyond blushing. Isabela grins back, downs the dregs of her drink, and takes Aliena’s hand. She leads her not outside, but upstairs. She takes a left before Varric’s suite, and pulls Aliena down the hall to a tiny room farthest in back. There’s space for nothing more than a narrow bed and Isabela’s sea chest, which she claims she fished up out of the sea after her ship went down, but which Aliena suspects washed up on shore by lucky chance.  
      
“Tell me this isn’t better than running around the streets waiting for gangs to jump us?” Isabela taunts, pulling off her headscarf and draping it across the end of the bed. Aliena just grins and hoists her bow and quiver off over her head, standing them up in the corner behind the door.  
      
Isabela peels off her boots as Aliena unbuckles her armor, kicking it under the bed with her own boots. Isabela kneels on the bed and pulls Aliena’s face to hers, kissing her long and slow and gentle, teasing. She pulls Aliena’s hair free of it’s ponytail, and buries her fingers in the red waves, holding her head still as her lips and tongue work their way across the archer’s jaw, lingering on the scar left by bad fletching as it was pulled back to aim. Aliena trails her fingers across Isabela’s bare shoulders, pressing them into the knot between her shoulderblades and pulling a shudder from her. She grins against Isabela’s cheek, pressing her own kiss there before Isabela’s mouth moves down her neck, taking her out of reach.  
      
Isabela pauses only long enough to strip Aliena’s shirt off, tugging the laces free and flinging the fabric over her head and off the end of the bed. She dips back down, lips trailing along Aliena’s sternum before she moves left to a nipple, eliciting a sigh of pleasure. Aliena tugs blindly at Isabela’s belt and scabbard, fumbling the buckles undone and setting it and the daggers attached to it down on top of the trunk before sliding her hand under Isabela’s shirt and returning the nipple-tweaking favor. Isabela laughs against her, and she arches against her, pressing closer to that joy.  
      
She doesn’t actually notice when Isabela undoes her belt and pulls her pants down, but she’s aware of the leather pooling awkwardly around her ankles, and kicks it off before kneeling down on the bed in front of Isabela, who pulls her own shirt off, and twists until Aliena is lying on her back, which allows Isabela to straddle her hips. She grins wolfishly, trailing fingers down Aliena’s body from throat to navel.  
      
“Comfortable?” she asks, settling lower. She slips a hand behind her to run up Aliena’s slit and swirl delicately around just the right spot. It’s Aliena’s favorite thing--Isabela proving she can do it without looking. There’s something incredibly arousing about someone so experienced and confident in her abilities. She’s this way in all her endeavors, of course, but this happens to be Aliena’s favorite.  
      
“Perfect,” she manages through gritted teeth as Isabela continues stroking, grinning. She slides two fingers in, the angle practiced enough times to not be awkward, and Aliena gasps before slipping her own hand down to return the favor. It’s Isabela’s turn to inhale sharply, and she raises herself slightly off of Aliena’s hips, giving her more room to position her fingers before she drops back down forcefully onto three of them. Their thumbs move in unison over each other’s clits and their breathing grows rapid as they build.  
      
It doesn’t take too long for either of them; Isabela comes first--Aliena makes sure of that. They’ve discussed it, and agreed that every once in a while, Isabela deserves to be looked after. But Aliena isn’t far behind, and soon they’re shuddering against each other, riding the crest of each other’s wave, burying screams of pleasure in each other’s kisses.  
      
Isabela drops off her; the bed is too narrow for her to lie next to Aliena, so she flops onto her stomach, draped halfway over the other woman. Aliena smiles, kissing her palm and sighing happily as Isabela rests her head on her shoulder.  
      
“Much better than waiting around to get jumped by gangs,” Aliena says lazily. Isabela laughs, and the sound feels so delightful against her skin.  
      
“You smell like the sea,” the pirate says.  
      
“I smell like the disgusting sweat that comes from wearing leather armor, but you’re sweet.”  
      
“You _taste_ like the sea,” Isabela corrects, her tongue darting out to leave a wet line across Aliena’s collarbone. She laughs.  
      
“You taste like paradise,” Aliena says, and Isabela tilts her face up so she can kiss her properly.  
      
“Now you’re sweet.”  
      
“That doesn’t make it untrue.”  
      
Isabela smiles and sighs, pushing herself up to sit, leaning back against the wall, her legs stretched out across Aliena’s stomach. “Why don’t we ever do this at your house?” she asks. “Your bed is three times the size of this plank, not to mention it’s quieter.” She makes a face as another cheer filters through the thin walls; Varric’s still telling stories. Aliena looks away, a tiny crease appearing between her eyebrows as a frown tugs the edges of her mouth down.  
      
“I don’t know,” she lies. “Maybe I like the audience.” Isabela laughs, but raises an eyebrow, demanding a better explanation.    
      
“You spend almost no time there anymore, you know,” she says. “You have this huge, beautiful house, but you’re never there.”  
      
“It’s...too empty,” Aliena says finally. “Gamlen’s house always felt cramped, with him and Bethany and...and Mother...” She closes her eyes, sighing. “We always swore we’d get out of there, Bethany and I. We would go up to Hightown together, at night, and we’d just look at the estate. All those windows... We promised each other we’d get it back for Mother, we’d put her in that beautiful house she deserved, and we’d be together where we belonged.”  
      
“You did,” Isabela says. But Aliena shakes her head.  
      
“Bethany never saw the inside of that house. The templars took her away before Varric sold all the loot from the Deep Roads, and by the time we took possession, it didn’t mean anything anymore. Mother was happy to be out of Gamlen’s hovel, but she would ghost through the halls. She lost both her darlings in less than two years.”  
      
“She still had you.”  
      
Aliena shrugs. “I never meant as much to her as the twins. It wasn’t anything personal, and I adore Bethany, so I never held it against her. But I always stood on my own. Bethany and Carver always relied on Mother, so she doted on them. Anyway, without Bethany, the house was just...so quiet. And now...” she pauses, taking a deep, shuddering breath. Isabela leans down and presses a kiss to her cheek, catching the tear before it falls.  
      
“I didn’t know,” she says.  
      
“It’s not home,” Aliena says quietly. “It never really was, for me. The people who would have made it home aren’t there, so why go back? It’s just an empty pile of bricks with a pretty crest painted on the door. Bethany always called it ‘the family home’, but there isn’t family there. Just...quiet spaces where they should be.”  
      
Isabela lays back down, curling around and over Aliena, as if protecting her. It’s surprising, coming from Isabela, but Aliena isn’t about to complain.  
      
“I know you don’t do feelings, dearest,” she murmurs, fingers tangling in Isabela’s hair, “but you’re my home now. Which makes this cesspit home, I guess.” Isabela doesn’t laugh. “I’m sorry,” Aliena says, moving as if to get up. Isabela pushes her shoulders back down, pinning her beneath her, and kisses her with more fire than she’s ever done before.  
      
“Oh,” Aliena says when Isabela pulls away.  
      
“What have you gotten yourself into this time, Isabela?” the pirate asks herself, smiling down at Aliena and gently brushing her hair away from her face, kissing her again, tenderly. “You’re welcome to come home any time you need to.”  
      
Aliena smiles. “Who are you and what have you done with my Isabela?”  
      
“She’s out waiting to get jumped by gangs and took all the practicality with her, leaving me to be irrational here with you.”  
      
“I’m not sure waiting to get jumped by gangs is practical.”  
      
“Funny. The amount you do it, you’d think it was the height of common sense.”  
      
“And you come with me, so what does that say about you?”  
      
“That I’m absolutely smitten. It’s a true tragedy. I should get Varric to write it all down.”  
      
Aliena snorts with laughter, and Isabela grins wickedly. “Feeling better, sweetness?”  
      
“I always feel better when you’re around.”  
      
Isabela sighs dramatically. “Here, I thought we were done with feelings.”  
      
“Oh, I don’t know,” Aliena grins. “I think I could scrounge up something really sappy for you, if you wanted. I could even throw _love_ around, then what would you do?”  
      
“Maker, spare me!” Isabela laughs, but Aliena catches her and kisses her, and Isabela melts a bit.  
      
“You don’t mind as much as you say you do,” Aliena says triumphantly. Isabela’s smile is gentle and almost content for a full minute before the wicked gleam comes back to her eyes and she maneuvers around until she can press her knee between Aliena’s legs.  
      
“What was that you were saying about home feeling empty?” she says, fluttering her fingers briefly in suggestion. “I can fix that, you know.”  
      
Aliena laughs. “If you insist.”  
      
Isabela leans forward to kiss her again, and her lips linger a moment too long on her cheek and Aliena almost loses the whispered words in another cheer from Varric’s room, though she knows better than to ask Isabela to repeat it: _Welcome home._

\---


End file.
